From loss to action, Burlington County families reach out as a resource to recovery

Kelly Kultys @kellykultys

Tuesday

Aug 29, 2017 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2017 at 6:00 AM

Gail Smith and her husband, Chris, thought they were doing everything right to help their son, Kenny, who was struggling with addiction.

They knew he needed help, so they sent him to Florida for rehabilitation and hoped for recovery.

"Kenny started experimenting with alcohol and marijuana probably about the age of 16. At that point, something just wired in his brain, just kind of lit up, and he took a liking to it. And he just continued on a road of progression," Gail Smith said.

By the middle of last year, Kenny went to Delray Beach to begin his recovery. But when his parents couldn't reach the 21-year-old Lenape High School graduate a few months into his stay last summer, the Mount Laurel couple knew something was wrong. Police in Florida eventually found him at a halfway house.

Local officers showed up at the Smiths' home on Aug. 16, 2016.

"And just to see the police come to the door, we knew, we knew what that meant," Gail Smith said. "It was the worst day of our lives."

In the year that's passed since Kenny died, the Smiths decided to use the pain of losing their son to help others fighting addiction. They founded the nonprofit Kenny Smith Freedom Foundation in his memory.

"(The) goal is to advocate and educate, but ultimately open a sober-living house," Gail Smith said. "One of the ways we did that recently, we met a homeless man who needed an airplane ticket to go to Arizona for treatment, and the Kenny Smith Freedom Foundation sponsored his airplane ticket."

The organization is one of many that have been created in Burlington County as families and friends who lost loved ones to addiction to combat the national opioid epidemic close to home. Since last year, more than 165 people have died of an illicit drug overdose in the county, including 82 in the first half of this year alone.

These grass-roots efforts and their organizers share a common theme of trying to spare other families from the same anguish.

But another theme has emerged from the groups as well: necessity. They share not just the desire to help, but also the frustration of knowing the challenges of recovery.

"It is here in Burlington County. It's your next-door neighbor. It's the people around the block. It's no longer the inner city. It's here. It's in Burlington County big time," Smith said. "If we could save one family the pain that we've gone through, then it'll be worth it."

The groups tackle everything from finding beds for detox quickly when a user says he or she is ready for help, locating treatment centers for the long-term care that so many say is critical to fight addiction, and helping those just out of rehab adjust to sober living.

Organizers say they fill the gaps that can become stumbling blocks and major obstacles to getting and staying clean.

Gail O'Brien's mission

Gail O'Brien, of Evesham, does whatever she can to help families avoid dealing with a loss like the one she's endured. Her son, Adam, was 26 in April 2014, when he committed suicide after battling heroin addiction for almost 10 years.

"My son passed from committing suicide, and I just — on a minute's notice, he decided to do this with carbon monoxide — and he had everything going for him and he was clean, and he went and used for a day," O'Brien said. "And everybody just assumes when they knew Adam passed that it was an overdose."

The Adam O'Brien Recovery Foundation was started with a mission "to support treatment and full recovery from drug and alcohol dependency in New Jersey."

For Gail O'Brien, that means doing a little bit of everything. Through money that the foundation raises at its annual events, such as the "Beef and Bands Recovery Rally," she helps get people into treatment, buy insurance, find beds for detox and locate sober-living facilities — and plenty more in between.

If someone needs a place to stay for a night or two before his date in detox, she puts him up in a hotel nearby for safety.

"We don't put them up in the best hotels. It's whatever money we have in the foundation," she said.

If someone needs a ride to treatment or to get home after a stay is done, O'Brien and her team get the calls.

Jay Dragum, who recently completed treatment and is living in a sober home, works with O'Brien as one of her "recovery buddies."

Over 15 people who are living in recovery help find those they know in active addiction and work with O'Brien to get them assistance. They also attend meetings with people, especially those new to sober living, to provide encouragement.

O'Brien recalled how just this summer, she reached out to Dragum in the middle of the night because she needed help.

"I called Jay and his buddies not too long ago (when) we had a girl up in North Jersey, and I'm like, 'Please, she's ready; she's a friend of another friend.' I mean, 12 o'clock at night, they're driving 2½ hours to go pick her up," O'Brien said. "Then we have somebody that will keep her for the night. So it's all this stuff we have to do until we get them into detox. They dropped her off at a house in Burlington County at one of my good friends, and she stayed there for two days until we got her help."

O'Brien and others say that informal network is key to providing the necessary services that otherwise go unmet and opportunities for recovery are lost.

She keeps her phone close, because she gets calls at all hours from all over South Jersey and even the state asking for help to get into treatment. Once they get out, they often call her again for assistance in finding a place to live.

And she has learned that sometimes it's the simple things that those in recovery need that make a difference. Earlier this year, O'Brien found herself tracking down a bicycle for someone to get to and from work, and to ultimately stay clean.

She said she'll do anything she can for people in need.

"This happens so often, and that's the only way we figure we can get them is when they're totally ready. If they call that day and they're ready, you've just got to (help)," O'Brien said.

Legal advocacy

One of the people who calls O'Brien if she finds someone in need is Lisa Vandegrift, of Pemberton Township.

Vandegrift lost her 20-year-old daughter, Sabrina, to an overdose in 2013.

Like so many who become hooked on heroin, Sabrina's addiction started with pain pills. She was diagnosed with scoliosis when she was a teenager, and after multiple surgeries, which included two rods and 17 screws in her back, she was prescribed high doses of opioids, primarily Percocet.

"Once she couldn't get them anymore, I guess I caught on, because I would monitor her medicine and all of a sudden medicine would go missing. And she was selling medicine to buy the heroin because it's so much cheaper," said Vandegrift, who tried multiple times to get her daughter into rehab.

After Sabrina died, Vandegrift knew she wanted to do something but didn't want to start a nonprofit.

"I was having a bad day and I was on my way to work, (and) I just said, you know somebody has to do something. I mean, no one is doing anything. They just want to keep it under covers. They don't want to talk about it," she recalled.

With the help of her niece, Vandegrift put together "Sabrina's Law," which would allow parents, guardians or designated family members to commit an addicted person into treatment, regardless of her age, or "involuntary treatment," as Vandegrift called it.

In January, Vandegrift testified before the New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services and Seniors Committee and the Assembly Financial Institutions Committee to try to persuade the legislators to enact the law. So far, they have not taken it up for a vote. She also spoke to Congressman Tom MacArthur's office about the legislation.

"You can't put them away, and if you do they can walk out. My daughter walked out of eight facilities," Vandegrift said. "They're not mentally stable. They cannot make the choice on their own."

One of the newest family-run nonprofit organizations in Burlington County came to be soon after King Shaffer died last October of an overdose. He was 49 and just a few days from attempting to go back to rehab.

Shaffer's sisters, Sue Harrison, of Evesham, and Anne Gutos, of Moorestown, had become his caretakers during his years of struggling with addiction.

"I have a friend who's been counseling (for) addiction in Palm Springs, and when I heard her refer to King a year or two ago actually as being at the end of his addiction, I never knew what that meant," Gutos said.

Shaffer was addicted to prescription pills from 1996 until about 2004, when he switched to heroin. His addiction stemmed from a wave-runner accident in 1996, in which he shattered disks in his back and did not go for treatment immediately, Harrison said, because he didn't want to cut the vacation short. He was prescribed Percocet, then OxyContin.

"And we could only see the defeat in him as it progressed, because it is a progressive disease," Gutos said.

King's Crusade

The last four years of his life, Shaffer was in and out of the hospital and rehabilitation centers, and usually stayed with his sisters and their families.

During that time, the sisters tried to learn as much as they could to help him. After he died, they wanted to share the knowledge they had accumulated with others and do something in his name.

They created King's Crusade.

"We decided we wanted to start something in our brother's name for the purpose of keeping his name alive, keeping his spirit alive, spreading awareness, being vocal, and not being silent about it," Harrison said.

"(We're) trying to erase the stigma where people have an image in their head of someone who is an addict or maybe using drugs."

They said even while Shaffer fought his addiction, he was still a good person and a loving family member and friend.

Gutos and Harrison organized their first event, an awareness expo in May in Evesham, which brought together treatment facilities, nonprofits, law enforcement and interventionists to provide resources to families in need. It drew dozens of resource vendors, top county officials and hundreds of attendees.

From there, their network grew and people began reaching out to them.

"I feel that we're still learning where we want to go," Harrison said. "We've been granting some people help with sober-home living who are coming out of detox and rehabs. We're getting calls to just support people and place people, and still kind of finding our way through our own grieving process."

The sisters have teamed up locally with Prevention Plus, an affiliate of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, based in Lumberton, which also runs the Burlington County Coalition for Healthy Communities. The sisters sit on the coalition and said their plan is to work closer with the organization to work on prevention initiatives.

"I think we're looking toward the future and our children and my nephew's age in middle school, and there's a lot of room there to move in and educate parents, and talk on a child's level," Gutos said.